Strange Recompense (11 page)

CHAPTER SIX

IF LOVE BE blind in some respects, it is almost painfully quick-sighted in others; and there was no doubt that Sara was in love with Noel. She had always been in love with him, ever since the day he had come to Glynmareth as resident surgeon. Sara, ever a fighter, had succeeded by sheer determination and application in her chosen career, succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, and here was something new upon which to fasten her ever-upward gaze. It was not long before ambition crystalized into a ruthless determination softened momentarily by a very real affection, the first worth-while emotion of her life.

Sara was so well aware of her own physical attractions that she had believed for years that it was only a matter of time until Noel would propose to her and she would move across to the villa as the Superintendent’s wife. And after that the road would be broad and clear before them! Noel would progress from success to success with her by his side, specializing and making a great name for himself. There was nobody who could help
h
im more than she could with her undoubted poise and her knowledge of the profession. A shared life and a shared interest! The ideal foundation for a successful marriage.

And now, in a day, in a matter of hours, her firmly held convictions had been severely shaken. She had come face to face with a girl who was several years her junior, a nameless creature with a
f
rail, ethereal prettiness about her, and she had seen a look in Noel Melford’s eyes that had threatened to topple the fairy castles she had built. It might almost have convinced her that Noel was already in love with Ruth’s waif, but, self-preservation being the strongest instinct, she clung to the hope that she was wrong. She had all but convinced herself of the fact until she met Noel the following day.

Nothing could have changed a man in so short a time but some overwhelming experience, an emotion stronger than any he had ever known, and nothing could have stamped that strained, white look on Noel’s face but the necessity for complete renunciation.

Sara wondered if her best approach might be sympathetic understanding, and there was great consolation for her in the fact that the girl was already married. She saw in the fact a subtle weapon near to her hand, and it was not long before she began to use it.

Her position at the hospital gave her free access to the notes on Anna’s case, which were filed in Noel’s consulting room, and she read what both he and Dennis Tranby added to them from time to time. Anna’s reaction to any discussion of her marriage was still one of distress, and therefore, Sara deduced, there must have been something discreditable in her past.

Discussing it with Eluned Warth, the Matron at the hospital, she was met with a certain amount of sympathy, for Miss Warth deeply resented any sort of slight, real or imaginary, on her position, and regarded Noel’s continuing refusal to bring Anna into the wards under her charge as a personal reflection of the grossest kind.

“I can’t think what Doctor Melford hopes to accomplish across at the villa that we cannot do here,” she observed in an aggrieved tone when Sara came in with her reports. “He is being most unreasonable about this case. It’s one for Doctor Wedderburn, but even now that Tim is back there’s no sign of the girl’s being handed over to him.”

“You know Tim won’t say a thing while Noel has the case in hand,” Sara frowned. “He’s so terribly easy-going and it will suit him admirably so long as Noel gives
him the odd report for his records! It strikes me,” she added, watching the older woman’s face for her reaction to the suggestion, “that this is essentially a police case.”

“My dear, isn’t that rather strong?” Miss Warth exclaimed. “I mean, you don’t think that the girl has done anything
wrong
?”

“What do we really know about her?” Sara demanded. “Intelligent—yes, and a good worker, apparently from a decent-class home by the way she speaks and the clothes she was wearing when Ruth brought her, but that’s all! On the other side of the balance you have the wedding ring that she deliberately disposes of—no one will convince me that it was accidentally lost out there in the bay!—and the fact that any reference to her marriage upsets her. She is also afraid of the sea and nervous of a car accident.
”

“Do you think that proves anything actually wrong?” Miss Warth asked doubtfully, not wishing to displease Sara by confuting her statements altogether. “She may have been in a car accident at one time.”

“There were no accidents for miles round on the night she was found,” Sara summed up, speaking almost as if to herself, and standing up to her full height, her lips compressed into a cruel line. “No. There’s something far from right about Miss Anna’s past and I mean to find out what it is if it takes me a lifetime!”

In spite of her undoubted admiration for Sara, Eluned Warth was decidedly taken aback by both words and manner, and the forceful vindictiveness of the statement made her wonder if she had ever really known Sister Enman. She had seen quite a lot of Anna these past few days, too, and had liked what she saw. The girl had seemed pleasant and willing to help in any way she could and there was nothing abnormal in her behaviour except for the lack of memory, which was a common enough thing these days. In the large city hospital where she had worked before being appointed to Glynmareth Miss Warth had seen as many as three amnesia cases brought in during one week, and all had been successfully cleared up after treatment, so that she could not really share Sister Enman’s gloomy view that this was a special case.

“I think,” she ventured wisely, “that we should have nothing to do with it unless we are asked.”

“You may think so, but I am not going to stand aside and see my friends being exploited! Ruth and Noel are only being made a convenience of by this girl and the sooner they realize it the better!”

“H-mm,” Miss Warth murmured, “That’s as may be. What about your holiday, Sister?” she asked, changing the subject. “You are due ten days in a couple of weeks’ time, but if you could take them before that I should be obliged. There’s the inspection next month, and the fete at the end of this one. Everything seems to come at once!”

Sara considered the prospect of leaving Glynmareth with tightly-compressed lips, opened them as if to refuse, and then thought better of it.
Even if I don’t go away anywhere it would give me freedom to get about here—round the district,
she considered. “All right, Matron, you can put me down for a week from today. I’ll go on Thursday off night duty.”

Miss Warth made a note of the date on her calendar and Sara rose with a mental note to track down Anna’s past if it took her every day of her forthcoming leave even to procure one single clue.

With this intention firmly fixed in her mind she went in search of Dennis Tranby, only to find Noel’s consulting room occupied by a staff nurse whom she disliked.

“Doctor Tranby is having a hypno session,” the girl told her briefly. “The ‘Keep Out’ notices are up, red light showing and all the rest of it!”

Sara moistened her lips. She had been about to reprimand the girl for flippancy, but she thought better of it.

“These t
h
ings don’t apply to me,” she said tartly. “Who is in there? What patient?”

“That awfully pretty girl who lost her memory,” she was informed readily. “The one who helps Doctor Melford.”

“Is Doctor Melford with Doctor Tranby?” Sara asked sharply.

“Oh, no! I heard him say he wouldn’t go in, and after Doctor Tranby started, Doctor Melford paced up and down in here for a bit and then went out. He looked upset.”

Sara glanced at her watch.

“It’s tea time,” she said with unexpected thoughtfulness. “Off you go and have yours. I’ll relieve you here for half an hour.”

“It really doesn’t matter, Sister—”

“Off you go, Nurse! I’m quite interested in this case, and I’ve had my tea,” Sara lied. “I shall wait till Doctor Tranby is finished.”

She sat down at the desk, lifting one of Noel’s pencils from the silver tray and tapping it with monotonous regularity against the blotter. It made a small muffled sound, the hidden beat of a determination that grew as she waited. What was going on in there? Had Dennis Tranby succeeded in lifting the veil from a past which seemed to concern them all in some subtle, almost menacing fashion, or were they still to remain confronted by that blank wall of forgetfulness which would keep Anna in Noel’s care indefinitely.

Sara bit her lip. That was one thing that must not happen! She would see to it that it did not happen with all the means in her power!

Once or twice she glanced towards the closed door between the two rooms, experiencing an almost overwhelming desire to go to it and burst it open, but years of training were stronger even than a primitive jealousy, and she continued to wait.

It was ten minutes to five when the door finally opened and Dennis Tranby stood there with perspiration beading his forehead and his whole body curiously limp and exhausted.

“Hullo, Sara,” he said. “I left Nurse Crabtree on guard.” He crossed to the basin to fill himself a glass of water. “Will you do what you can for Anna in there? She’s feeling the strain, of course, so make her rest for a while.”

“Any luck?” Sara asked almost casually.

“In a way, yes.” Tranby’s brows were drawn together in a frown, his dark eyes remotely thoughtful as he reviewed the impressions of the past half-hour. “I think I have definitely established the fact that she comes from farther north than this—from the north-east coast, perhaps. She was familiar with moorland country and she thought that there had always been animals about the house.”

“A farmer’s daughter?”

“Maybe. There was no hesitation about her acceptance of a sister, but a brother puzzled her, and the mention of her mother made her sad.”

Sara realized that he was making a mental resume of the interview rather than speaking to her directly, but she continued to listen intently.

“There was no suggestion of any definite place?” she queried, waiting for his answer with an impression of climax.

“I couldn’t strike a responsive note anywhere in that respect,” he confessed, “so either my geography is bad or I have been barking up the wrong tree! We’ll see what Noel thinks when he comes in.”

That “we” pleased Sara. It made her feel included and from a professional angle it was flattering. It could, of course, mean nothing or everything, and she remembered that Noel had not asked help with the case so far. He had made it a personal concern, but perhaps that “we” of Dennis Tranby’s was tantamount to an admission of defeat. Noel might have decided to turn the girl over to the hospital. The sense of satisfaction derived even from the possibility was exhilarating and Sara went about the task of
p
reparing a cup of hot, strong tea with a feeling of relief in her
h
eart.

She carried it in to Anna, who was sitting in the chair beside the window where Dennis had left her, still profoundly shaken by her recent experience, yet aware by the look on Tranby’s face that it had not proved entirely fruitless.

“I’m really all right,” she said when Sara asked her how she was.

“Of course you’re all right!” Sara said briskly, her voice professionally encouraging. “There’s nothing physically wrong with you, and you will benefit immediately as soon as you are back in your native north country.”

She watched her patient carefully for the expected reaction, but a heavy sense of loss was all that Anna could feel. It was as if Sara’s encouraging words had opened up a vista of future pain for her instead of the happiness which she knew she should have experienced at the thought of going home where she belonged. It was as if she did not want to remember the past at all!

“Most cases of your kind clear up quite suddenly,” Sara went on, “and the curious part is that the in-between time, the things that happened in the forgetful period, are themselves forgotten.”

“But that mustn’t happen!” Anna cried, distressed at the very thought. “I mustn’t forget about Ruth and Noel and all they have done for me!”

“My dear girl,” Sara returned cuttingly, “don’t imagine for one moment that Ruth or Noel, or even Dennis Tranby for that matter, are doing this from any feeling of personal affection. I’ve told you before that we regard your sort of case as a special duty. Quite frankly, we find amnesia a most interesting study. No two amnesics are the same and each case must be judged on its own merits.”

“You make it all sound so—cold-blooded when you put it that way,” Anna cried, hurt beyond measure by the intended cruelty behind the words, “but it doesn’t alter the fact that everyone has been so kind.”

“Of course, we try to be kind,” Sara answered patiently, “but quite often kindness is taken advantage of and we feel that we have to be blunt.”

“That’s not true!” Anna flashed. “And I know Ruth would never think such a thing. She has told me over and over again, that I am not in the way at the villa, that I am 'working my passage.’ That was the way she put it and I choose to believe her.”

“Ruth,” Sara reminded her crushingly, “is unfailingly generous. Ever since I have known her she has been helping one kind
o
f lame duck or another, but they’ve generally had the grace to realize when they have outstayed their welcome.”

Anna got unsteadily to her feet.

“You needn’t worry, Sister Enman,” she said frigidly. “I shall leave Glynmareth as soon as I feel the slightest suggestion of having outstayed my welcome.”

“Now, then,” Dennis Tranby asked, coming to the door, “how do we feel after the cuppa?”

Anna looked up at him with a grateful smile.

“Quite ourselves!” she laughed. “What did I give away?”

“You’d be surprised!” he grinned. “The facts were bad enough, never mind the details! But off you go into the fresh air for a while. Better slip across to Ruth and sit in the garden for an hour, preferably out of the sun.”

He wheeled round at a movement in the room behind him, and beyond his broad shoulders Anna saw Noel’s drawn face with the color all gone out of it and his eyes darkly shadowed as he searched Tranby’s for the truth.

“We’ve had a partial success,” Dennis told him briefly, and Noel pushed his way past him to come to Anna’s side.

“Are you all right?” His anxiety was in no way professional as he caught both her hands in his, holding them in a grip that hurt. “Anna, are you all right?”

“Yes.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “Yes, Noel, I’m all right.”

“Thank God!”

He sat down in the chair she had vacated and passed an unsteady hand over his hair.

“I was never much in favor of this sort of thing,” he said roughly.

“But even though it has only been partially successful,” Anna said haltingly, “you once said that every detail counted, that you couldn’t afford to pass over the slightest clue.”

“That’s true enough,” he said, rousing himself. “Everything counts—everything!”

His voice had regained some of its old mastery, but his eyes still held the pain of remembering and Sara Enman turned away, hurrying out at the far door without so much as an excuse, black hatred in her heart and a fierce, bold purpose in her mind.

“I’ve told Anna to go across to Ruth for an hour,” Tranby explained. “You won’t need her, will you?”

“No.” Noel was still gazing at Anna, but his mouth had taken on a more determined line and his eyes were steel-grey and hard, his lips twisting a little as he repeated Tranby’s words. “No, I won’t need her.”

“I can easily stay,” Anna offered, “if there’s anything important to do. I don’t feel in the least tired and I haven’t really done any work this afternoon.”

Noel looked down at her, smiling a little.

“Go across to Ruth,” he said gently. “Dennis and I will come across later.”

She hurried away from the cool efficiency of the hospital, from its remoteness, to the warmth and kindliness which the villa garden had always represented for her.

“Anna,” Ruth asked, coming down the path behind her. “why have you come back home? Was this afternoon not successful? Have they drawn another blank?”

Ruth came and sat on the flat stone beside her and Anna answered without turning round.

“I still don’t know who I am, but Dennis seems to think the effort was not entirely wasted.”

“It has tired you,” Ruth suggested, “Would you like to go in and lie down for a while?”

“No—
no,
thank you, Ruth. It wasn’t a dreadful experience at all.” She tried to pull herself together, rounding up her scattered thoughts. “More like—dropping off to sleep than anything else—a sort of overwhelming weariness, but no strain and hardly any fear.”

“Dennis was confident,” Ruth said thoughtfully. “He has much greater faith in hypnotism than Noel has.”

The mention of her brother’s name seemed to flicker between them like fire. Anna sat very still, her hands clenched in her lap, her eyes on the brown, silent water at their feet, and then she said: “Ruth, I must go over to the hospital—permanently, I mean. Really, I must. I—I suppose I should have been under the police doctor all this time.”

Her words dropped into a deep silence and then Ruth said:

“It’s not because you have lost faith in Noel—it can’t be that!”

“No—never!” Anna turned to face her, feeling that her heart must burst. “Ruth,” she said, “I’ve got to go.”

Months afterwards Ruth Melford confessed to Dennis Tranby that her first instinctive reaction had been to say “go” for Noel’s sake, but the quality in Anna which had so endeared her to them had never been so strong as at that moment, and she could not inflict added hurt where hurt had already been accepted so
g
allantly. Besides, she did not consider that Anna’s transfer to the
h
ospital would solve thei
r
problem in any way, and she said so at once.

“You may as well be here as at the hospital. That’s no solution, Anna, my dear. You’d see Noel almost every day, anyway.”

Startled, Anna raised pain-filled eyes to hers.

“There would be Doctor Wedderburn—”

“And Noel,” Ruth said quietly. “They work together, and Noel would never agree to give up your case now. Besides,” she added, “if you did insist, he would wonder why.”

“Oh, Ruth!” Anna cried passionately, knowing that Ruth must have guessed her secret long ago, “why had I ever to come into your lives at all! I’ve been nothing but a problem to you from the moment you picked me up that day on the moor!”

“We’re not meant to select our own problems,” Ruth said quietly, “nor to question them when they are sent, I think.” She bent over and put a hand on the younger girl’s knee. “We’ll pull out of this, Anna—together.”

Anna held on to her fingers tightly for a few minutes before she squared her shoulders
in a determined effort to face this particular problem bravely.

“I’ll never forget all you’ve done for me, Ruth—never!” she said. “And I’ll find some way of repaying you—some day.”

“Friendship,” Ruth mused, “is a form of repayment. We all give to it unstintedly and we give to love, too, only love is the more demanding. Don’t hesitate to come to me, Anna, if things go wrong for you. There may be something in my experience that you need. I am much older than you are.”

They went quietly over the experiences of the afternoon discussing them rationally until Noel came to stand behind them on the grass. He had crossed the lawn silently, and when his long shadow fell on the stones at their feet Anna started up as if she had seen a ghost.

“Something has come out of this afternoon’s session that we think should be cleared up right away, Anna,” he said, taking her completely into his confidence as he had done from the beginning so that she had never quite felt the “case” that Sara had gone out of her way to assure her she was and nothing more. “It will entail a walk across the moor,” he went on. “To-morrow’s Saturday. Do you think you could manage it if we left early and took the car as far as Llangareth?”

“If you wish it,” Anna responded instantly. “Surely, oh, surely, this will bring us to something! What did Doctor Tranby think about this afternoon?”

“We’re keeping that a most deadly secret for the present,” he told her lightly. “We think it may link up with something else tomorrow, but we don’t want you to know beforehand in case it might confuse you.” He put a hand on her shoulder as he turned away towards the house. Chin up, Anna!” he commanded. “We’ll beat this thing yet—between us!”

Ruth had agreed to go with them when Noel had assured her that her help might be valuable to them.

“Make it all seem as natural as possible,” he advised the following afternoon. “Anna has the heart of a lion, ready to face the unknown with tremendous spirit, but it’s still bound to be something of a strain.”

“She’s such a little bit of a thing!” Ruth said. “But she’s even stronger than you think.”

He did not answer that, and she went out to the car where Anna was waiting.

“We’re going to pick up Dennis on the way,” Noel announced. “He’s taking the day off.”

Ruth flashed him an inquiring glance, but he did not seem inclined to add anything further and she left it at that. She got into the back seat where Anna had already settled, determined, it seemed, not to thrust herself too much upon Noel even when circumstances made it inevitable that they should be together.

Dennis kept them waiting almost half an hour while he finished an overflowing surgery, insisting that they should wait indoors, and Anna followed Ruth into the spacious Georgian house, glancing about her with frank interest.

The home which Dennis Tranby had been asking Ruth to share with him for years was indeed worthy of her, a gracious, lovely old house leading directly from the pavement, but with a walled garden behind it where apple trees bent low over mossy grass and almost every flower that grew made a brilliant splash of color along the borders. Peach and nectarine and pear rambled along the walls, the fruit already thick on the branches, and a weeping willow drooped over a rustic seat beside a tile-bordered pool.

The house was furnished in perfect taste, too, the lovely period pieces carefully polished by Dennis’ elderly housekeeper, who brought them coffee in the dining-room. She set the silver tray down on the end of the oval table where it lay reflected as in a mirror, and left Ruth to pour out.

Anna watched Ruth with a stabbing envy in her heart, realizing how much she longed for the peace and security of a home such as this, and then she realized that Ruth must long for it too, that it was here for her to take but for a promise made long ago when Noel was very young. There was no sign of impatience in Ruth’s gentle, immobile face, however. She had achieved the quiet of perfect inward peace and it was reflected in her eyes for all to see.

When Dennis finally joined them he accepted his cup from Ruth with a smile, their fingers just touching under the delicate china, and Anna saw the unconscious longing behind that smile and knew that she was not alone in the bitterness of her renunciation.

Looking up suddenly, she found Noel’s eyes fixed on her across the room with such a look of intensity that they might have been there together alone, yet somehow he seemed to be looking beyond her, too, seeing down into the future, perhaps, and finding no hope there.

“Shall we go?” he asked almost harshly. “It’s after eleven, and we did plan to get as far as Llangareth before lunch.”

They motored quickly along the high road with the green panorama of the hills all about them, and then Noel turned the car towards the sea and Anna felt that she recognized the road.

“Wasn’t it here you picked me up that day?” she asked Ruth unsteadily. “I’m sure I recognize it—the big, humped mountain over there and all the lower hills dipping down to the sea.”

“Can you remember the exact spot?
”
Noel asked from the front seat. “Was there any special landmark?”

“There was a milestone and a clump of mountain ash on the far side of the road. Ruth pulled up under the trees.”